Unconscious Archives - Page 13 of 19

Count your Yesses

May 28, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

As Rick Hanson famously says, “Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” That’s because your brain’s primary concern is your survival, so it’s primed to pay more attention to the negative. Positive things may indeed help you survive. But negative things can kill you. As far as your brain is concerned, it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to expect and prepare for a possible threat (there might be a tiger behind that bush) than to be surprised (and wounded or eaten) by that tiger.

It’s easy to forget that we’re operating with essentially the same brain our ancestors on the savanna had. But if you want to overcome your brain’s negativity bias, it’s important to remember that System 1, the unconscious part of your brain that runs you most of the time, doesn’t always deal effectively with the stimulation, stressors, and sheer volume of information you have to contend with in your daily life.

It’s easier for all of us to pay attention to the negative: the threats, the slights, the hurts, the things that fall apart or don’t go our way. We don’t have to make a point of looking for what isn’t working in order to find it. Our brain does that automatically. Another aspect of our survival-based brain—its associative method of “thinking”—makes it easy to get on a negative track and stay there. One darn thing leads to another, meaning one similar thought reminds you of another similar thought. Before you know it, your mood and your attitude have soured, and your ability to refocus your attention has evaporated.

You can’t stop your brain from noticing the negative, and it wouldn’t even be a good idea to try. But neither do you have to give in to it. The advice to count your blessings comes to mind, but I find blessings to be a loaded word on several levels. I prefer to count my yesses. It’s a great way to turn the tide when I notice I’ve mentally starting traveling along that road to nowhere.

Although I tend to be pretty optimistic and upbeat, the first thing I noticed when I began this practice was how much easier it is to count my nos. Because the nos are brought to our attention by System 1, the unconscious part of our brain that is always on and processes 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, they come to mind immediately and automatically without any effort on our part. Counting yesses, on the other hand, requires intention, which is a function of System 2, the conscious part of the brain that is slow, lazy, and easily depleted.

The process of shifting my attention doesn’t just change the mental track I’m on; it also causes me to be aware of how influential my mental model of the world is at any given moment.

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

That quote has been attributed to several different people, but regardless of who said it, it’s true.

When you’re tired, stressed, or sick—or when life has dealt you some kind of blow—you simply have less System 2 attention available. So it’s easy for the nos to get the upper hand. A couple of weeks ago I went through a bout of food poisoning. During the illness itself and the two days that followed, the nos were abundant. I observed the downward trend in my thoughts, but I also understood what was happening. I was pretty sure my perspective would change once I got better (which it did), so I didn’t let the nos carry me too far downstream.

Someone I know regularly posts what she calls “The Daily Yes” on Facebook. It’s a prompt that works well for me because I don’t have a regular schedule for accessing Facebook, so I don’t always see it at the same time of day. But every time I do see it, I stop to read it. It doesn’t matter what the specific content is. It’s the word yes that’s my cue to pay attention to what’s juicy and zesty and working in my life—to who and what has said yes to me and who and what I’ve said yes to.

It’s easy for one no to outweigh many yesses, so much so that we may not even notice the yesses when they occur. That’s why I’ve found it helpful to make a list, whether it’s on paper or just a mental list. It reminds me that my brain does have a negativity bias—but that I don’t have to agree with it or go along for that particular ride.

The Space-Mind Continuum

April 6, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

We all have a limited amount of System 2 (conscious) attention to dispose of each day, and when we’ve exhausted it we can’t quickly or easily replenish it.

Every waking moment, you are making judgments about where to focus your attention. If you didn’t, you would be overwhelmed by the vast amount of sensory information in your surroundings. The ability to direct attention, a skill humans share with species as primitive as fruit flies, helps you process what is important to you at the moment and ignore what is not. —Ingrid Wickelgren, Scientific American

The problem is that if you don’t have enough System 2 attention available to direct your focus, System 1 (the unconscious) will focus on what it thinks is important.

You use your conscious attention for many different things, some of which are necessary and unavoidable. You can exhaust it on important matters and complex tasks, for example. Or when you’re sick or injured or worried about a friend or family member. But you also probably squander conscious attention bit-by-bit on dozens of minor things throughout the day. Even worse, you may be squandering it on the same minor things day after day. Many of these things are literally just occupying space, thereby limiting the conscious attention you have available.

Inner Space and Outer Space

The things that occupy space in your mind (inner space) and in your environment (outer space) have an effect on the way you think, how effective your thinking is, and even what you think about. For example:

It’s difficult to focus your attention, solve a problem, or complete a complex or demanding task when you’re preoccupied with another issue (inner space).
It’s hard to focus or to think clearly when the surrounding decibel level gets above 90 (outer space).
It’s difficult to avoid thinking about how utterly and completely disorganized you are every time you can’t find something—or what a sloth you are you when you can’t invite guests over for dinner because the dining table has become the repository for several months’ worth of mail, numerous unfinished projects, and the general detritus of your daily life (outer space).
It’s next to impossible to be present or attentive when you’re in the process of running through your mental to-do list (inner space).

The more things occupying your inner and outer space at any given time, the less System 2 attention you have available. And the less System 2 attention you have available, the more likely you are to be at the effect of System 1 (unconscious/autopilot) thinking.

The Trouble with System 1 Attention

System 1 attention—also called bottom-up attention—isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s essential to your survival. But as Winifred Gallagher writes in Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life:

Bottom-up attention automatically keeps you in touch with what’s going on in the world, but this great benefit comes with a drawback, particularly for postindustrial folk who live in metropolitan areas and work at desks rather than on the savannah: lots of fruitless, unwelcome distractions. Maybe you want to focus on your book or computer instead of the fly that keeps landing on your arm or that ambulance’s siren, but just like your evolutionary forebears, you’re stuck with attending to those insistent stimuli.

Not only do you have to contend with a host of fruitless, unwelcome distractions in your environment over which you may have little to no control, you are also continually creating additional distractions in your environment and in your head.

The result is that, moment-to-moment, rather than being deliberately focused, your attention is likely to be spent responding to stimuli.

That’s important because what you put your attention on shapes the quality of your life.

We all have a limited amount of conscious attention available. We can’t easily get more, but we can learn how to make better use of what we have. A good first step is to try to identify what claims–and can drain–our conscious attention.

Grateful for My Brain: a 2014 Year-End Review

January 5, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

Doing a year-end review has always been one of those things that seem like a good idea but which I never quite get around to. This past year was unique in a number of ways, and so I decided—almost on the spur of the moment—that it would be prudent and productive to spend some time evaluating what happened.

I’m a huge fan of list-making, so instead of using any of the many different tools, processes, and resources available, I conducted my review in the form of making several lists. This turned out to be so helpful that I’ve already put it on my calendar to do again at the end of 2015.

Here are my list headings:

What I accomplished

This was by far the longest of my lists. Because I have a tendency to dismiss what I have done in order to berate myself for what has yet to be done, making this list helped me stop and smell the roses a bit. It gave me greater perspective on the multiple endeavors I’ve been engaged in. It also showed me the areas where my attention was focused—and the areas where it wasn’t.

What I didn’t anticipate

There’s no question that this was the most useful of my lists. The more than two dozen things I hadn’t anticipated—roughly half positive and half negative—not only had a significant effect on my life in general and what I was able to accomplish, they also provide concrete evidence that I can’t predict the future no matter how much my brain wants me to believe I can. We can—and should—plan ahead, but it’s important to remember that getting from here to there is rarely a straight line. Randomness and luck often play a larger role in both process and outcome than we’d like to acknowledge.

What worked

It was good to recognize what I’m doing right so I can keep doing more of that.

What didn’t/doesn’t work

It was also good to recognize mistakes I’ve made, opportunities I’ve missed, or areas that need major or minor tweaking.

What I’m grateful for

In addition to many other things—and people—I’m grateful for my amazing brain (yours is equally amazing, of course) and all the fantastic tricks it can do. Read to the end to see what my brain did with the material from my year-end review.

What I learned

One thing I learned is that I have a lot more to learn! But it was illuminating to see how much more I know now than I knew at the beginning of last year. It gives me hope and also some confidence in the face of the always uncertain future. Here’s actual evidence that I figured out how to do quite a few new things, so it’s likely I’ll be able to figure out how to do more things I don’t yet know how to do.

What I’m not satisfied with or what needs more attention

This list helped me focus on where to put my attention now. It was the last 2014 list, which made it relatively easy to complete and included a couple of surprises. I’m pretty sure it would have been more difficult to hone in on these things if I had started with this category, and I might not have seen things as clearly.

I created just two lists for 2015:

What I want to have happen this year

15 things that are sort of a hodgepodge of goals, intentions, and hopes. This list and the list of what I’m not satisfied with are the foundation of my short-range (3-6 months) planning process.

4 habits I want to keep; 4 habits I want to improve or change; 4 habits I want to start

Again, it was useful to identify what I’m doing that’s working before listing what I want to change (what isn’t working so well). I limited each category to 4 to keep it manageable. A limit of 3 might be even better.

I worked on these lists in bursts of time over several days, so the content was on my mind—and in my brain—throughout that period. As the brain tends to do, mine started looking for solutions for some of the bigger problems I’d identified. And not just during the day! One very long night, I was unable to fall asleep because I couldn’t stop trying to figure everything out logically (as illogical as I knew it was to be doing that in the middle of the night—or maybe ever).

Then, in one of those sudden moments of clarity I’ve come to know and love, the solution to one of the problems just showed up (thank you, System 1!), and as soon as it did, I realized that particular solution also took care of two other problems. I hadn’t even seen the three things as being connected. At that point, I immediately fell asleep, only to be awakened by the alarm clock an hour and a half later.

In the clear light of another day, and after a decent night’s sleep, the solution that appeared in the wee hours that morning seems both obvious and elegant. But had I not laid the groundwork for it by focusing my attention on all these areas of my life, I doubt I’d even have been able to identify the problems. And even if I had identified them, I’d probably be trying to find individual solutions for each of them—using the slow, logical part of my brain.

The moral of the story (which I should have tattooed somewhere on my body, sans parenthetical expressions and asides): Use System 2—the conscious part of your brain—to lay the groundwork, and then give System 1 an opportunity to do its thing (which includes seeing patterns, making connections, and putting the pieces together) to come up with a creative solution System 2 can only stand back, figuratively speaking, and admire.

Overthinking: Don’t Get Stuck in Analysis Paralysis

December 1, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

It’s one thing to look before you leap. It only makes sense to consider the potential outcome or consequences of an action you’re about to take. But it’s another thing altogether to believe you can fully determine—or even guarantee—the outcome based on the amount of thinking you do about it.

Overthinking often consists of making multiple lists of pros and cons, running through if/then scenarios, trying to gather as much information as possible, or attempting to approach the issue from every conceivable angle. The process of trying to make a decision becomes overwhelming. Worse, it drains conscious (System 2) attention throughout the period of time you’re trying to make a particular decision. So the more thinking you do about it, the less effective your thinking becomes. You can find yourself going around and around in mental circles, either unable to make the decision or just taking a stab at something—anything—because you can’t stand thinking about it any longer.

Overthinking also begets second-guessing, in which you get to run through several rounds of “if only/then” scenarios.

Overthinking is driven by your brain’s craving for certainty. But thinking harder or longer about something won’t necessarily get you closer to an answer. Here’s why:

In spite of your best efforts, your information will always be incomplete. There are things you don’t know, can’t know, or won’t know at the time you’re trying to decide, and any of those things could be important enough to affect the outcome. Unfortunately, we don’t know what we don’t know, and so we don’t take it into consideration.

Even if you were to have access to all of the information, because you’re human you’re subject to numerous cognitive biases, which means you won’t be able to view it entirely objectively. For example, you will overweigh some information and underweigh, or even ignore, other information. System 2 thinking may be what you’re aware of, but System 1 still has plenty of input, and System 1 makes mistakes.

You can’t account for randomness. The very idea of randomness makes your brain a little crazy, so it refuses to accept it. Your brain is under the impression it can find a cause-and-effect link for anything and everything. The consequences of randomness, according to physicist Leonard Mlodinow, are counterintuitive. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!)

You can’t predict the future. Even more to the point, you can’t predict how you’re going to feel in the future. Daniel Gilbert, in Stumbling on Happiness, says we tend to think the future will be a lot like today…only different. But the future is fundamentally different from today, and the way you feel right now when you think about the consequences of taking some action is not necessarily the way you will feel when you are living with the consequences of that action.

Taking any action can have unexpected results and undesired consequences. Although you can anticipate that such things might occur, you can’t plan for them because you won’t know what they are until after they happen.

Too much logical, linear thinking is as bad as too little. After framing the problem or situation and considering possible solutions, turn it over to your unconscious (System 1) for a while and see what it comes up with. Let your mind wander instead of keeping it on a tight leash. The sudden insight, moment of clarity, or change in perspective you get may surprise you. But this is the way the creative process works, and it’s a great way to use both parts of your brain to your advantage.

Additional reading: Intuition: Knowing without Knowing How We Know.

Depression’s Interesting Effect on Decision-Making

November 19, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

How does depression affect decision-making? In a word: negatively. That’s not a big surprise. But why do depressed people have a harder time making decisions? According to the results of a recent study reported in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, one reason is that people who are depressed have more difficulty accessing their intuition. In my last post, Intuition: Knowing without Knowing How We Know, I said that intuition as the result of the associative thinking of System 1 (our unconscious), which constantly sees patterns and connects dots our conscious brain (System 2) is unaware of.

Intuitive—or associative—thinking is good for making short-term predictions and for everyday decision-making. And it’s everyday decision-making that depressed people report having difficulty with. Instead of accessing or relying on their intuition, they use the rational, logical, and linear thinking of System 2, which is considerably slower.

Over-relying on System 2 thinking often results in “analysis paralysis,” which I’ll be covering in my next post. System 2 attention is limited and easily depleted, so if we have to rely on it for every little decision we make, we will quickly run out of steam. We won’t be able to make any decision, large or small.

Another thing the study revealed is that depressed people are more likely to ruminate. Maybe it’s this tendency to ruminate that disrupts a person’s access to intuition.

In a post on rumination last month, I wrote:

Rumination feels like problem-solving, but it actually prevents us from solving problems because it keeps us focused on negative events and emotions. We continue to dwell on our problems instead of attempting to resolve them. Rumination disrupts our self-regulation. Because we want to feel better, we try to distract ourselves or turn to immediate gratification. Rumination also increases stress levels and has a negative effect on our general health.

Rumination is a low level of thinking in which one thought leads to another but never to a solution or a conclusion. Rumination occupies mental space and System 2 (conscious) attention, which is already in short supply.

So depression may at least partially be a matter of using, or getting stuck in, the wrong kind of thinking. Intuition—otherwise known as jumping to conclusions—isn’t infallible by any means, but in terms of ordinary, everyday decisions, it is generally reliable. And when it’s wrong in those situations, the stakes tend not to be high enough to lead to major negative consequences.

System 2 thinking is slow, effortful, and deliberate. It’s great for solving complex problems and for long-range or strategic planning. It isn’t the best choice for the hundreds of quick decisions we normally need to make every day. It’s easy to understand how someone could become mired in the quicksand of System 2 thinking and feel mentally paralyzed.

Some suggestions on curtailing ruminative thinking can be found here. Hopefully, the link between a tendency to ruminate and the loss of access to intuitive thinking will lead to greater insight into depression and more treatment options for those experiencing it.